"You deserved it," she said unapologetically, rolling over to face him. This was a mistake. She couldn't avoid the happiness that radiated from him like this, and the confusion from it off-set the edge in her reply. "You hurt me first."[break][break]

She shoved him then, but it was a more playful and performative gesture than anything else. It lacked the forcefulness he'd remember from that day. Both of them had been far too willing to kill one other, and she knew in her hearts of hearts that this sort of instinct didn't just vanish and go away.[break][break]

"But maybe we prefer hurting each other," she added, and a begrudging smile of sorts followed that wry concession. "That was the most honest either of us had ever been."[break][break]

She'd felt so alive as she'd hurled him towards the lava. It was the first time she'd truly let the mask she'd worn in Hoenn fall; of everyone in the League, that facade had cracked for him first.[break][break]

He'd unearthed the part of her that Wo-chien would drag out later.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

If she were anyone else, she supposed that moment in Mt. Chimney would have horrified her into avoiding him forevermore.[break][break]

She couldn't call it a fond memory, no, not when she'd been disgusted by him so thoroughly -- but there had been a self-satisfaction to it that she couldn't deny, an affirmation that her silent suspicion of all men remained justified.[break][break]

"You're a monster, just like I knew you were," that part of her had crowed with cruel glee. "You're selfish and cruel, just like every man who pretends he isn't."[break][break]

That side of him she understood. That side of him she even found relieving, for it was comforting to have her expectations met.[break][break]

When he chuckled and spoke of her with such fondness, she held far less surety. The flawed cracks in her own perception of him revealed themselves in those moments, like fragments of glass left invisible until a passing ray of sunlight illuminated them for all to see.[break][break]

Was his perception of her as flawed? It had to be, or he wouldn't love her so foolishly.[break][break]

It had to be, or else he'd understand what the gift she'd handed him really meant.[break][break]

"I don't know what that says about you," she admitted, and it was hard to know if she was talking about what he'd said or where her thoughts had drifted now. "You seem to enjoy punishing yourself."[break][break]

She lacked the self-awareness to realize she did the same.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"If you say so," she replied, shrugging off his assumption. Hearing him speak for her like this no longer brought about the same dizzying spiral of terror and indignation it used to. Repeated exposure had lessened its power over her.[break][break]

She'd become comfortable with the existence of his delusion even, like a parent who'd finally resigned themselves to coexisting with the mangy Poochyena their child had smuggled into the house.[break][break]

He'd just ransacked her peace of mind, instead of her home. Though he'd ransacked that, too.[break][break]

"It'd be easier if I didn't care about you at all," she complained quietly, seeming unaware that she'd slipped up and revealed that truth aloud.[break][break]

She envied others their ability to be unfeeling.[break][break]

She envied the version of herself that had never learned to empathize with Matias in the first place.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Do you think that's a good idea?" she said doubtfully, unable to piece together her counterargument as he pulled her closer to him. The mixed signals between her mind and her body complicated her own response, and she bit her lip, silently at war with herself.[break][break]

Until now, she hadn't ever remained with him the entire night. She'd known better. She'd understood the dangerous implications that staying would give him.[break][break]

That proverbial line in the sand reminded them both this wasn't true intimacy. It reminded her that they were only two people making use of one another emotionally and physically. She compartmentalized and defined those boundaries between them clearly, tidily keeping their lives separate and apart.[break][break]

This was for his own good as much as hers.[break][break]

Hope was a cruel thing to give someone, like taunting a man dying of thirst by dangling water just out of reach. Denying him what he wanted altogether was a kinder thing.[break][break]

"I won't leave, Matty," she finally decided, absolving herself of all responsibility, "if you don't want me to."[break][break]

If she were to be honest with herself, she'd never been kind to him.[break][break]

Not at the start of this strange journey, and not here either, while facing its untimely end.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Then I'll stay."[break][break]

Was it cowardice that made her lie to his face so easily?[break][break]

Her fingers gently traced over the contours of his face, memorizing its features with the knowledge that this might be the last time she ever had the opportunity to really know him. An inexplicable sorrow gripped her at this, the kind of sorrow that came with all endings, even though this was the ending she had wanted, asked for, and always secretly desired from him.[break][break]

She preferred this though, being the one who decided how something ended. She'd been discarded the once and the pain of that rejection and betrayal had almost killed her; far better to be the one with the knife than the one stabbed in the back, she'd reasoned. Who would ever choose to play the part of Samson over Delilah?[break][break]

For a moment, she closed her eyes and dared to imagine the future he wanted for them. The evergreen lush forests. The eternally burning sun. She tried to imagine a world where she loved him the way he wanted to be loved, instead of the twisted and warped way she understood that emotion.[break][break]

Could she ever be happy in a life like that? Could she ever be content?[break][break]

In her mind's eye, the sun turned into a sickly, green thing that polluted the sky. The earth shriveled up like dust; the lush forests withered and rotted; the soft-spoken words between them turned into an exchange of blows, love reverting to violence as the two of them returned to the start of this vicious and unnatural cycle between them.[break][break]

And yet, weren't some cycles meant to be broken? Someone important had told her that, once. Someone contemptuously wiser than she'd ever been.[break][break]

She blinked that hazy and impossible future away, having dwelled upon it longer than she should have.[break][break]

"Matty?"[break][break]

Her voice came out timorous and small, frightened by its own daring.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

She hated the way he smiled at her, seeing her as some precious and cherished person that she didn't deserve to be. She hated how he looked at her like she was the sun or some other life-giving thing, instead of the poisonous snake he'd let slither into his bed.[break][break]

"Don't trust me," her eyes wanted to say.[break][break]

"You should kill me now while you can," the nagging guilt wanted to confess.[break][break]

"I warned you this would happen. I warned you it wouldn't end the way you wanted this to," all of her wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.[break][break]

"I told you all I do is hurt people. Whatever happens next isn't my fault."[break][break]

"It's not my fault, it's not my fault, it's not my fault, it's not my--"[break][break]

Her voice faltered then as she swallowed all these protests back, burying them down, down, into some dark and fathomless place where they could fester and decay. When she managed to meet his gaze again, she resolved against doing what was right, knowing she had to do what was necessary.[break][break]

Encircling his face in her hands, she kissed him slowly and tenderly -- the way she'd first kissed him on Mt. Chimney of her own accord, apologizing for sins she'd known even then that she'd commit against him.[break][break]

"You weren't wrong about everything," she promised him instead as she buried herself in his embrace, running away from her conscience the way she ran from everything else in her life. She knew she'd run from the wreckage she'd make of him, too. "I just... wanted you to know that."[break][break]

It didn't matter, of course. It never mattered.[break][break]

She understood this only made her betrayal a greater cruelty, a deeper and more complicated wound.[break][break]

People who were kind to you hurt you most of all.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

As Matias held her in the quiet hours of night, she marveled that he could feel so safe with her. It wasn't until now that she finally understood how simple he was.[break][break]

Her own mind remained far, far too alert, keenly vigilant, and aware of her own vulnerability like this. To let herself fall asleep here was to invite him to reveal his true intentions the moment she let herself enter the realm of the dreaming.[break][break]

The opposite was surely true as well, and yet, he had drifted into slumber as easily as a child might. No paranoia about her intentions kept him awake at this late hour.[break][break]

So there it was then, the unavoidable truth made plain: He trusted her. He hadn't lied after all.[break][break]

He loved her.[break][break]

"I don't understand why you did that," she heard herself whisper, and perhaps he'd hear this confession in his distant dreams, or it'd be a thought that drowned itself in darkness. "I don't know why you gave me the power to hurt you."[break][break]

It was why she knew better than to love him back. Love was cruel, in that way.[break][break]

She couldn't say how many minutes and hours went by trapped in his embrace, while her tired mind raged against rest. Half-lidded eyes kept sight of the sea beyond the window, watching as moonbeams danced and rippled on the water. She ached to sleep, yearning to shut off all her thoughts as she attempted to count each wave that passed beneath the waning moon.[break][break]

Time nonetheless passed in a slow, punishing crawl.[break][break]

You could never pinpoint the moment that the night shifted into morning. She'd thought as a child that perhaps you could blink and miss the single instant that daylight sleepily broke over the horizon. Change, though, always came slowly. The sky awakened with one brushstroke of color at a time, banishing the shadows of the night as each star faded out, one by one.[break][break]

Only when the golden dawn cast its full light over the water did she feel herself surrender to slumber, accepting the peace of him when it was far too late to matter.[break][break]

He'd awaken to find her sound asleep in his arms, as if she'd never been afraid of him at all.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]